CAMBRIDGE, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Essex County Council and Hertfordshire County Council today announced
that they are working together to pilot new smart city services.

The project, a partnership with Cambridge-based technology firm Telensa,
will assess the potential quality-of-life and economic benefits of a
range of smart city technologies.

Essex and Hertfordshire are building on a foundation of investing in
practical innovation.

Both councils were early adopters of Telensa’s wireless streetlight
controls, which pay for themselves and save money every year, by
reducing energy consumption and enabling a more efficient maintenance
operation. They also recognised that by harnessing their county-wide
lighting networks, they could introduce new smart city monitoring
services at a fraction of the cost.

The smart city solutions in the project include:

Gully monitoring: blocked street drains (gullies) cause
flooding, and monitors can alert and even predict problems before they
cause a flood.

Highway wind monitoring: instantly alerts the highways team of
high winds or gusts, and builds a data set that helps to predict
dangerous local driving conditions.

Traffic monitoring and analytics: from dimming unnecessary
streetlighting on empty roads to understanding local traffic patterns.

Waste bin monitoring: enables cleaner streets through more
responsive collections, and helps make sure there is enough capacity
where it is needed.

Air quality monitoring: provides street-by-street measurement
of air quality to complement the broad picture provided by existing
monitoring stations.

It’s not just about the operational benefits. Infrastructure monitoring
builds up a vast data set that can be used to spot trends across
departments, leading to better decision making and more joined-up
working.

The councils are currently assessing the suitability of three sites in
Hertfordshire and Essex towns. The pilot is due to commence in March and
will run initially for two months.

Cllr Ian Grundy, Essex County Council Cabinet Member for Highways, said:
“I am extremely excited about the benefits this trial offers by using
technology to deliver more for less for our residents.

“We currently rely on inspections and residents reporting issues, like
blocked gullies, to us across more than 5,000 miles of roads in Essex.

“The potential to monitor issues remotely will not only save taxpayers
money, it will also improve our reaction times and allow us to fix
issues before they become a problem.

“Last summer we became the first authority in the country to install
‘smart’ streetlights which offer the potential to monitor pollution,
create Wi-Fi hotspots and even guide driverless vehicles in the future.
These are now being rolled out across Essex by Ringway Jacobs crews and
we believe this work will really complement the smart city partnership
work we are doing with Hertfordshire County Council and Telensa.”

Ralph Sangster, Executive Member for Highways at Hertfordshire County
Council, said: “Smart technology is becoming an essential tool in
delivering a high quality highways services and “Safe Smart” is an
exciting opportunity to trial a modern technology which reinforces
Hertfordshire County Council's ongoing commitment to maintain and
improve roads for the benefit of all Hertfordshire residents.

We have already converted around 65,000 of our street slights to LED and
are in the process of converting the remainder, some 50,000, by March
2020. These LED lights are controlled by a wireless Central Management
System (CMS), which detects faulty lights and enables changes to be made
to light settings with the flick of a switch at a central
point. Therefore many faults will be resolved before anyone notices.
LEDs not only use much less energy but also emit less CO2 than
conventional lamps, helping to cut the county council’s carbon tax
contribution.”

Will Gibson, founder and Chief Commercial Officer at Telensa, said:
“Hertfordshire and Essex are pioneers of smart street lighting, and
between them already use Telensa technology to control 250,000
streetlights. This project will show the community and financial
benefits unlocked by adding new sensor applications to the Telensa
streetlight network.”

About Telensa

Telensa® makes wireless smart city applications, helping cities around
the world save energy, work smarter and deliver more joined-up services
for their citizens. Telensa PLANet is the world’s most deployed smart
streetlight solution, with a footprint of 1.5 million lights. Building
on the compelling business case for its smart streetlighting, the
company provides cities and utilities with an open, low-cost platform to
add multiple sensor applications.

Telensa’s Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) wireless networks simply attach to
light poles. They can provide city or region-wide coverage in a matter
of days, and are designed to run reliably for decades. The company is
working alongside other leading vendors within ETSI (the
European Telecommunications Standards Institute) to develop standards
for LPWA networks.

Telensa is also a founding member of ETSI’s City Digital Profile (CDP)
that will help accelerate the delivery of integrated citizen services
and provide a technology road map for city leaders who will benefit from
standardized solutions from their suppliers.